The birds had come out briefly after the rain. Now they were going to their rest, cheeping softly in the trees.

“I do hope you were planning to say something,” I said finally, politely. “Because if you don’t, I’ll probably start screaming, and I might not be able to stop.”

He made a sound somewhere between amusement and dismay, and sank his face into the palms of his hands. He stayed that way for a moment, then rubbed his hands hard over his face and sat up, sighing.

“I have been thinking all the time I was searching for ye, Sassenach, what in God’s name I should say when I found ye. I thought of one thing and another—and … there seemed nothing whatever I could say.” He sounded helpless.

“How is that?” I asked, a distinct edge in my voice. “I could think of a few things to say, I daresay.”

He sighed, and made a brief gesture of frustration.

“What? To say I was sorry—that’s not right. I am sorry, but to say so—it sounds as though I’ve done something to be sorry for, and that I have not. But I thought to start off so would make ye maybe think …” He glanced at me. I was keeping a tight grip on both my face and my emotions, but he knew me very well. The instant he’d said, “I’m sorry,” my stomach had plunged toward my feet.

He looked away.

“There’s naught I can say,” he said quietly, “that doesna sound as though I try to defend or excuse myself. And I willna do that.”

I made a small sound, as though someone had punched me in the stomach, and he glanced sharply at me.

“I won’t do it!” he said fiercely. “There is no way to deny such a charge that doesna carry the stink of doubt about it. And nothing I can say to you that doesna sound like some groveling apology for—for—well, I willna apologize for something I havena done, and if I did, ye’d only doubt me more.”

I was beginning to breathe a little easier.

“You don’t seem to have a lot of faith in my faith in you.”

He gave me a wary look.

“If I hadna got quite a lot of it, Sassenach, I wouldna be here.”

He watched me for a moment, then reached out and touched my hand. My fingers turned at once and curved to meet his, and our hands clasped tight. His fingers were big and cold and he held mine so tightly that I thought my bones would break.

He took a deep breath, almost a sob, and his shoulders, tight in his sodden coat, relaxed all at once.

“Ye didna think it true?” he asked. “Ye ran away.”

“It was a shock,” I said. And I’d thought, dimly, that if I stayed, I might just kill her.

“Aye, it was,” he said very dryly. “I expect I might have run away myself—if I could.”

A small twinge of guilt was added to the overload of emotions; I supposed my hasty exit couldn’t have helped the situation. He didn’t reproach me, though, but merely said again, “Ye didna think it true, though?”

“I don’t.”

“Ye don’t.” His eyes searched mine. “But ye did?”

“No.” I pulled the cloak closer round me, settling it on my shoulders. “I didn’t. But I didn’t know why.”

“And now ye do.”

I took a deep, deep breath of my own and let it go, then turned to face him, straight on.

“Jamie Fraser,” I said, with great deliberation. “If you could do such a thing as that—and I don’t mean lying with a woman, I mean doing it and lying to me about it—then everything I’ve done and everything I’ve been—my whole life—has been a lie. And I am not prepared to admit such a thing.”

That surprised him a little; it was nearly dark now, but I saw his eyebrows rise.

“What d’ye mean by that, Sassenach?”

I waved a hand up the trail, where the house lay invisible above us, then toward the spring, where the white stone stood, a blur in the dark.

“I don’t belong here,” I said softly. “Brianna, Roger … they don’t belong here. Jemmy shouldn’t be here; he should be watching cartoons on television, drawing pictures of cars and airplanes with crayons—not learning to shoot a gun as big as he is and cut the entrails from a deer.”

I lifted my face and closed my eyes, feeling the damp settle on my skin, heavy on my lashes.

“But we are here, all of us. And we’re here because I loved you, more than the life that was mine. Because I believed you loved me the same way.”

I took a deep breath, so that my voice wouldn’t tremble, opened my eyes and turned to him.

“Will you tell me that’s not true?”

“No,” he said after a moment, so softly I could barely hear him. His hand tightened harder on mine. “No, I willna tell ye that. Not ever, Claire.”

“Well, then,” I said, and felt the anxiety and fury and fear of the afternoon run out of me like water. I rested my head on his shoulder, and breathed the rain and sweat on his skin. He smelled acrid, pungent with the musk of fear and curdled anger.

It was entirely dark by now. I could hear sounds in the distance, Mrs. Bug calling to Arch from the stable where she’d been milking the goats, and his cracked old voice hallooing back. A bat flittered past, silent and hunting.

“Claire?” Jamie said softly.

“Hm?”

“I’ve got to tell ye something.”

I froze. After a moment, I carefully detached myself from him and sat upright.

“Don’t do that,” I said. “It makes me feel as though I’ve been punched in the stomach.”

“I’m sorry.”

I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to swallow the sudden feeling of nausea.

“You said you wouldn’t start off by saying you were sorry, because it felt as though there must be something to be sorry for.”

“I did,” he said, and sighed.

I felt the movement between us as the two stiff fingers of his right hand thrummed against his leg.

“There isna any good way,” he said finally, “of telling your wife ye’ve lain wi’ someone else. No matter what the circumstances. There’s just not.”

I felt suddenly dizzy, and short of breath. I closed my eyes momentarily. He didn’t mean Malva; he’d made that clear.

“Who?” I said as evenly as possible. “And when?”

He stirred uneasily.

“Oh. Well … when ye … when ye were … gone, to be sure.”

I managed to take a short breath.

“Who?” I said.

“Just the once,” he said. “I mean—I hadna the slightest intention of—”

“Who?”

He sighed, and rubbed hard at the back of his neck.

“Christ. The last thing I want is to upset ye, Sassenach, by sounding as though it—but I dinna want to malign the puir woman by makin’ it seem that she was—”

“WHO?” I roared, seizing him by the arm.

“Jesus!” he said, thoroughly startled. “Mary MacNab.”

“Who?” I said again, blankly this time.

“Mary MacNab,” he repeated, and sighed. “Can ye let go, Sassenach? I think ye’ve drawn blood.”

I had, my fingernails digging hard enough into his wrist as to pierce the skin. I flung his hand away, and folded my own into fists, wrapping my arms around my body by way of stopping myself from strangling him.

“Who. The. Hell. Is. Mary. MacNab?” I said, through my teeth. My face was hot, but cold sweat prickled along my jaw and rolled down my ribs.

“Ye ken her, Sassenach. She was wife to Rab—him that died when his house was burnt. They had the one bairn, Rabbie; he was stable-lad at Lallybroch when—”

“Mary MacNab. Her?” I could hear the astonishment in my own voice. I did recall Mary MacNab—barely. She’d come to be a maid at Lallybroch after the death of her nasty husband; a small, wiry woman, worn with work and hardship, who seldom spoke, but went about her business like a shadow, never more than half-noticed in the rowdy chaos of life at Lallybroch.

“I scarcely noticed her,” I said, trying—and failing—to remember whether she had been there on my last visit. “But I gather you did?”

“No,” he said, and sighed. “Not like ye mean, Sassenach.”

“Don’t call me that,” I said, my voice sounding low and venomous to my own ears.

He made a Scottish noise in his throat, of frustrated resignation, rubbing his wrist.